Researchers uncover remains of civilization under Black Sea

In the end, all that was missing was a guy named Noah, 40 or so pairs of animals and one very well-known ark. A team of explorers from the National Geographic Society and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology announced yesterday they have uncovered 7,000-year-old evidence of an ancient human civilization beneath what is now the Black Sea. And despite initial theories that the team had stumbled upon the flooded terrain immortalized in the biblical tale of Noah's Ark, the project's lead scientists say their find has a very non-religious significance. "There's no way that we're finding Noah's Ark," said Robert Ballard, National Geographic's explorer-in-residence and lead researcher on the expedition, in a press conference yesterday. "That would have floated away in the flood. What we're really excited about is that we've found evidence of human habitation that was left underwater and is very old." Ballard is best known as the deep-diving explorer who discovered such famous undersea wrecks as the Titanic and the Bismarck. He was joined on board his Black Sea research vessel by Fredrik Hiebert, a Penn Anthropology professor and the project's chief archaeologist. According to Hiebert, the discovery has the potential to reveal much about human history, but very little about any biblical tales. "This new data suggests that we're looking at an incredibly important event in human history," Hiebert said. "One of the surprising things for me is to see how different this Black Sea world is from the world of our biblical myths," he added. Both Ballard and Hiebert, who spoke with the press on the phone from their vessel Northern Horizon, are still exploring off the coast of Turkey. The original connection between a flooded Black Sea basin and the Noah's Ark tale was raised by Columbia University professors William Ryan and Walter Pittman in their 1997 book Noah's Flood. In the book, Ryan and Pittman claimed that melting glaciers flooded what was then a freshwater lake to create the enormous saltwater Black Sea of today. Ballard and Hiebert's underwater exploration -- which began last year with the discovery of an ancient underwater coastline -- uncovered the existence of a number of items suggesting the area was once home to human society. "We saw crafted wood. We saw implements that were drilled," Ballard said. "We saw stone slabs that had been arranged. In other words, we saw evidence of human activity." The project was jointly funded by a number of different organizations, including the University Museum. According to University Museum Director Jeremy Sabloff, Hiebert's participation in the project is a very significant accomplishment for both him and Penn. "For us, it's very exciting," Sabloff said. "We like to think of ourselves as the leading research institution of our kind in the world." Sabloff added that while the discovery is certainly exciting, it is still too early to begin defining its true significance. "The potential is just tremendously exciting but we need to be cautious about its ultimate significance," he said.